ANY minute now we’re going to be embroiled in yet another heated debate about how we are to be governed. The issue is who should sit in the States, what their constituencies should be and when they should be elected.

Unfortunately, despite all the years of hard work, investigation and discussion that have gone into the subject, we are likely to end up with a dog’s dinner. What’s worse is that no one appears to be able to prevent it happening.

The Privileges and Procedures Committee is convinced that something needs to be done and it needs to be done urgently. They are prompted by voter apathy and the fact that turnout in elections in Jersey is among the lowest in the world. 

Whether moving the deckchairs around in the States is going to make much of a difference is debatable, but it’s true that the current composition of the States is a bit of a nonsense and needs to be reformed. That’s even if it doesn’t increase public involvement and election turn-outs as it’s hoped.

Also what doesn’t appear to be accepted is that whatever the States decide to do about the composition of the States it’s going to have an impact on the rest of the machinery of government and in particular, ministerial government, which is of much more interest to the public.

The danger of piecemeal reform in the composition of the States, which follows so closely the piecemeal reform that brought in so-called executive government, will create even more problems.

They are both inextricably linked and you shouldn’t look at one without the other. Who is in the States determines who is in the Government, and, most importantly, determines where the government gets its mandate.

So if we are at last going to tackle the way in which the States is made up, we have to understand that it has – or should have – an impact on ministerial government.

I can hear the groans of anguish at the prospect of looking again at ministerial government so soon after it was dragged reluctantly into being. And that’s probably why we won’t touch it again and we’ll end up with that dog’s dinner.
The PPC rather skirt around the issue of mandates in their current report.

For example, they don’t seem to think it matters whether our ministers have an island-wide mandate or just happen to have been elected unopposed in St Mary.

They say that being elected by the whole Island is not essential for ministerial office and they point out that the current Council of Ministers includes a Constable (they call it Connétable for some unknown reason; perhaps they are just showing off their knowledge of French). The COM even includes three lowly deputies, so PPC say a role in the executive is open to all, however they have been elected or even not elected.

On this basis the PPC would not find it odd to see a UK cabinet including three borough councillors and a chief constable. (Yes, I know it’s not comparable, but what is comparable to a Connétable?)

But we are in danger of looking at the problem from the wrong angle. To get any change through the States we’re trying to find a fudge that will suit all vested interests and maintain traditions people want while at the same time trying to create a modern system of government. It can’t be done.

There’s not even much point in consulting the public at length and trying to put together a package based on the responses to opinion polls. All you end up with is the aforementioned dog’s dinner.

The States have to take the lead, as PPC acknowledges, and they have to come up with bold reforms covering the whole machinery of government that will not only be acceptable to the electorate in a referendum but also actually promote the interests of democracy. It sounds like Clothier Mark II to me.

So if the object of reform is to provide more voter interest and confidence in the system, then it has to be modernised, not massaged.

A modern electoral system should not have different levels of representation, based on different types of constituency.  The Senators and Constables should go, and the States consist entirely of Deputies, the syetem they have managed to achieve in Guernsey.

Most importantly, the Deputies must be elected on the basis of constituencies containing the same number of people. That means parliamentary constituencies would not follow parish boundaries, unless that is we want a States of 55 members.  That’s  the number we would need to give everyone an equal vote based on one Deputy for the smallest parish with a population of only 1,591.

The Constable of St Clement, who agrees that the Constables should not be ex-officio members of the States, seems to think this is a relatively unimportant mathematical problem. Unfortunately, ensuring that every vote has equal weight is a basic principle of democracy.

It’s certainly a far more fundamental principle than trying to maintain some kind of ‘vital’ relationship between the States and the parishes, as the Constable wants.

But why does he believe that the States and the parishes need to have a relationship?

The parishes have nothing whatsoever to do with the government of the Island. They may well be useful in providing local services to a small, clearly defined community, although even that is questionable.

Frankly, most of those services currently left to the parishes  could be more efficiently and effectively provided from the centre. There may once have been an argument for the Constable being the ‘father’ of the parish when he or she knew every parishioner and understood their needs. But those days are, sadly, over.

There is, however, a strong tradition to uphold, and there’s nothing wrong with that, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with improving the way the Island is governed.

The parochial system is definitely important in fostering the feeling of community and giving parishoners a focused way of being part of and supporting their neighbourhood. Unfortunately, at the moment the parish system just appears to be a way of supporting what I call the parish mafia.

Indeed much more could be done to foster parish life and improve that community spirit. Perhaps if the Constables were not so busy in the States they could concentrate much more on this.

Certainly there should not be any role for them in a modern States Assembly.

Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine.